


Rose is Here

by entropyalwaysincreases



Series: Les Cousins Dangereux [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cousincest, F/M, No Smut, Pre-Relationship, family drama in the making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 08:04:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8741716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entropyalwaysincreases/pseuds/entropyalwaysincreases
Summary: Rose heads upstairs to get dressed and James automatically stands up to follow her. Ron notices this and queries over his coffee “Why are you here anyway, James? Albus on your nerves again?”
James just shrugs. “Rose is here,” he says without thinking, and follows her up the staircase, her mentally cursing him all the way.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This leads directly off of Chapter 2 of Albus Knew-- Hermione worried. You should probably read that first.

She opens the door with the Hollyhead Harpies poster carefully, wary of the squeaky floorboards that threaten to wake her grandparents one floor above. The room is dim but she can see James’s outline in the bed, sprawled out so he stretches from corner to corner. She prods his bare shoulder and he jerks awake.

“Wassamatter?” he asks blearily, rubbing his eyes at her.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she whispers, and he lifts the corner of his blanket so she can sidle in next to him, then traps her with a heavy arm around her waist.

“Bad dreams?” he mumbles into her hair, rubbing her arm soothingly. She shakes her head and leans back into him. He doesn’t request further explanation; they used to do this all the time when they were younger, finding comfort tangled up in each other. Rose wonders sadly how much longer they’ll be able to get away with it.

The hand on her arm trails into fingertips and he traces fanciful designs on her skin. She immediately offers him her other palm and he outlines curly-q’s and stars and letters on her hand until she shivers from the sensation and sighs in the back of her throat. He chuckles at her and gently turns her so he can kiss her forehead. She closes her eyes and leans into his lips. James pulls back to look at her and their eyes meet for a second too long, and she gets the feeling that this is a defining moment somehow, but she turns her back to him again and snuggles into his pillow and feels the comforting weight of his arm around her ribcage, and she sighs either in relief or dismay. She tries not to think about the warmth of his bare chest or the sudden hardness she can feel through thin pajama bottoms, or about her true motives for sneaking down three flights of stairs in her stocking feet. She tries not to think at all.

She’s woken by her mother, and at first she doesn’t know where she is, but she removes James’s arm without comment and offers an explanation unfazed. Rose has always been good at hiding things. It isn’t until her mother awkwardly advises her to leave her childish things behind—that dreaded day is here, apparently—that she realizes maybe she—they?—haven’t been as good at hiding things as she thought. Except, hiding what?

Her father is loud and boisterous with his greeting, and she manages to pull herself out of her thoughts to put a grin on her face and a large pile of kippers on her plate. She barely blushes when James stumbles in—still shirtless—rubbing his eyes and pulling breakfast foods toward him without discernment.

Grandmum huffs though.

“I don’t know what your parents allow you to get away with at their house, James, but I always made my children show up _fully dressed_ to the breakfast table.”

“She’s right,” Ron says through a mouth full of kipper, pointing his fork knowingly at James. “We were held to the upmost standards of decorum.”

Grandmum huffs again and turns back to the dishes piling up in the sink, which Hermione hurries to help with. At some point Hugo stumbles in too and they start to talk about packing up and heading home. Rose heads upstairs to get dressed and James automatically stands up to follow her. Ron notices this and queries over his coffee “Why are you here anyway, James? Albus on your nerves again?”

James just shrugs. “Rose is here,” he says without thinking, and follows her up the staircase, her mentally cursing him all the way.

 

She avoids him for a few days, avoids herself really, drowning herself in textbooks and endless cups of tea. He isn’t one to stay away, though, and by the end of the week he’s standing in the doorway of her room smirking at the mess that has become her bed.

“Trying to read the whole library before September?”

“I’m _trying_ to prepare for the year,” she bites back, looking up only to see him shift a stack of books from her pillow and take a seat. “You should be, too… you’ve got N.E.W.T.’s this year.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Right. Like I’m going to ruin a perfectly good Quidditch career over a few silly tests.”

She doesn’t have a come-back to this; they’ve had this conversation too many times, and his dreams of Quidditch stardom are far from deluded. He accepts her silence as defeat and picks up a book from her nightstand.

“ _Circe’s Wild Nights_?” A surprised grin overtakes his face. “Now I don’t remember that being on the required reading list last year…”

“Just because it wasn’t _required_ doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it, James…” Rose replies absently, before noticing what book he’s holding. She blushes so horribly that her face is actually redder than her hair. “Give it _back_.”

She reaches for the book, but of course that’s exactly what he expects her to do. He leans back, holding the tome out of her reach, leafing through the pages and reading choice passages out loud; his other hand keeps her at arm’s length. “ _She dragged her tongue down his rapidly swelling member_ —Merlin, Rosie, you read this stuff?”

“Give it _back_ , James Potter, or so help me…” She redoubles her efforts and ends up straddling his chest, subduing one hand with her thigh and managing to snatch the book from the other. She sits up, breathing hard, and slams the book shut, giving James the dirtiest look she can muster. It’s only then she notices he’s breathing hard too, and seems to be in no hurry to move from his reclined position on her bed. She scoots to the end, putting distance and a throw pillow or two between them, and resumes her fierce expression. “The _wasn’t funny_.”

“On the contrary, it was very funny.” Rose wants to wipe the smug grin off his face. “But hey, no judgments here… how else are you going to learn?” He pauses. “Of course, real sex isn’t really like that.”

She snorts. “Like you would know,” she says without thinking, and then feels an icy weight drop in her stomach when he doesn’t respond. “Would—would you know?”

It’s his turn to blush, and he does it just as spectacularly as she does, those Weasley genes showing through underneath his shock of dark hair. Rose’s eyes grow wide. “Holy shit— _who_?”

He shrugs, trying and failing to be casual. “Megan DeWitt… after the last Quidditch match…”

Rose remembers that match—she ought to, it’s only been two months—and she remembers the after-party. Well, bits and pieces of the after-party; if there’s anything she knows for certain, it’s that there were copious amounts of alcohol available. She doesn’t recall James’s whereabouts; after he paraded into the common room with the cup held aloft she had lost track of him. She’d been a bit preoccupied herself, with an unfortunate incident involving Richard Peters and a flask of firewhiskey that she’d been trying to live down all summer.

“You remember the party,” James continues, watching her carefully, and she realizes her face must be blank. “We won the match, plenty of booze, you were snogging Peters…”

“Yeah, but I didn’t have _sex_ with him,” she says, eyes flashing. She tries to calm herself down; she shouldn’t be so upset about this. James is Quidditch captain, after all; he’s bound to attract plenty of girls. And she’s his cousin, she should be happy for him. James got laid. Good for him. “Whatever. Congratulations. I have to study now.” She picks up a book at random and retreats to the armchair across the room from her bed.

“Rose—“

 “I’m really happy for you, James. Please leave.” She continues to stare at her book even though the words don’t make sense and she’s pretty sure it’s upside-down. She can tell he’s looking at her, and she can’t imagine what expression is on his face. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. She hears him sigh, and the door click behind him. She curses the angry tears that manage to escape down her face.

 

He doesn’t make an appearance at her house again, and she hates how quickly she starts to miss him. It’s not just the apparition thing, although that’s certainly part of it—the fireplace is in the kitchen, so whenever she goes anywhere, she has to explain it to her parents—it’s his very presence. It brings her back to that terrible year when he went to Hogwarts and she didn’t, and gives her a taste of the near future, when he’ll move on with his life, and she won’t. Albus shows up on the third day and he seems troubled.

“Whatever you two fought about, it’s got him in a right strop,” he says, as they lie on her floor and look at her ceiling. “He called me a wanker yesterday, but it was so half-hearted I almost felt bad for him.”

Rose almost feels bad for Albus; she’s always felt almost bad for Albus. By all accounts, it’s _him_ she should be best friends with—they’re in the same year, after all. But Rose and James, the two firstborns, had 10 months without him and he never quite caught up. She only feels almost bad because she couldn’t exactly wish the situation on him instead.

“It’s nothing,” she sighs. “I just—I overreacted to something that I don’t really have the right to overreact to…not that that excuses him…” she adds under her breath. Even from her peripheral view she can see Al’s raised eyebrows and she wonders how much he really knows. Albus has always been more observant than she likes to give him credit for.

They decide to visit the shop—through the floo, and with full parental permission, of course—and she’s only half surprised to see James standing behind the till. Albus really is a wanker. She scowls at him but he just smiles and disappears into the back room. She’s left quite on her own with James, who seizes her elbow and guides her around a barrel of Canary Creams.

“Can we talk?” he says in her ear, voice low so that the hordes of students and other shoppers don’t hear. “Er, not here…”

She rolls her eyes and shrugs in response, and he takes that as permission to grasp her arm tightly and turn on the spot. They land in a field near the Burrow, and he leads them to sit under a large tree that fans its shade over the waving grasses.

“George added me to the wards,” he says proudly. “I can apparate or disapparate there now… pretty cool, huh?”

Rose just stares at him pointedly.

“Er, right—anyway, what I wanted to say was I’m sorry, for, you know. And I shouldn’t’ve said it like that, or maybe ever, or done it, or yeah. And so I’m sorry for that.”

Rose shrugs. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I have no right to be mad about anything. And I’m not. Mad, that is.”

“You’re not?” James frowns. “You’re not mad at all?”

“Not in the slightest,” Rose says primly, rearranging her skirt. “Like I said, I’m happy for you.”

“Happy for me,” James says without expression. “Right.”

“Well, if that’s all,” Rose stands up and brushes grass from the back of her sundress. James stays seated and seems to be steeling himself to say something.

“I was mad,” he said quietly. “When I saw you and Stevens. That’s why I did it. And that’s why I told you. But if you’re not mad…”

“Not at all,” Rose says quickly. “I wish you and Megan every happiness.”

“For fuck’s sake!” he says, standing up and striding toward her. “I don’t want Megan DeWitt! I want you!”

The kiss is rough, nothing close to how she imagined it would be. She can’t find her bearings and their teeth clash and his hand is too firm on the back of her head. She doesn’t have a chance to reciprocate before he lets her go and immediately looks horrified at what he’s done.

“Oh Merlin, Rose, I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean, I shouldn’t have—“

But because he’s James, and because if there’s anyone who deserves a second chance it’s him, she leans forward on her tiptoes and presses her lips to his. One hand cups his jaw and the other anchors her to his shoulder. He seems as surprised as she’d been, but she’s firm and soon his lips respond and his arms find the small of her back. Her tongue traces his lips and he opens them to her probing advances, explores tentatively himself, and _this_ is the kiss that should’ve been their first, because they know each other better than they know themselves and everything should come this easily.

They sink into the grass beneath the tree and somehow Rose is straddling his lap and his hands are in her hair and when one brushes accidentally past her earlobe, she shivers. This does not go unnoticed by James, and the next thing she knows he’s tracing the shell of her ear with his tongue and tugging gently on the lobe with his teeth and she lets out a strangled gasp that makes him go hard.

This awakens Rose to their surroundings, not least their proximity to the Burrow and how bad it would be if they were found. She rolls herself off him awkwardly and he’s left mouthing at the air where her neck used to be. He looks at her accusingly with a half-drunk expression on his face and absurdly she wants to laugh, giddiness spreading to her extremities so her fingertips buzz with nervous energy and her knees jerk of their own accord.

“Look where we are,” she says breathlessly, gesturing wildly in the direction of the Burrow, and he seems to understand. He clambers to his feet clumsily, offers her a hand to pull her up too.

“We should go back,” he says, but makes no move to apparate, and indeed Rose wonders if he could in his current state.

“How do I look?” she demands, straightening her dress—when did those buttons come undone?—and combing her hair with her fingers.

“Beautiful.” He looks at her through heavy lidded eyes and she can’t help but blush.

“Not helpful,” she says, though she can’t quite achieve the right tone. “I can’t show up at the shop looking like I shagged someone.”

His eyes bulge slightly and she regrets her choice of words.

“Make me a mirror, won’t you? You know Mum takes our wands during the summers…”

His first attempt comes out quite distorted and she winces to think what his apparition might look like—a leg and a spleen in Sussex, probably—and makes him try again. She’s not as disheveled as she thought; her hair’s a bit messy, but so far no major bruises or love bites have formed on her neck. Her earlobe is swollen, but she doesn’t think that’ll attract much attention. She looks up to see that James is still staring at her.

“What?”

He shrugs, a slow grin spreading over his face. “Just glad you don’t hate me.”

She smiles back. “I could never hate you.” She stands on tiptoe to lay a chaste kiss on his lips and when she pulls away he follows her down hungrily, drawing it out until the last possible moment.

“We really have to go,” she whispers. He nods, composing himself, then holds out his hand.

“Trust me?”

She nods and takes his proffered hand, and that’s all the affirmation he could ever need.


End file.
